The new book features protagonists chasing after clean slates, attempting to leave behind addictions or abusive marriages, only to witness hope devolve into aggression. Chris Kraus repeatedly invokes the phrase "clean slate", transforming it into intentionally weary through constant reiteration. Phrases such as "He could make a fresh start" and "They opted for a clean break" recur in the narrative. And yet, Kraus herself seems to be making her personal new beginning, because this seems a different type of work – observational, truly literary. But then it turns out to be filled with the familiar conflicts and approaches as earlier books.
From Chance Novelist to Cult Classic
The writer started out as an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, made up of epistles to an unresponsive love interest, elevating confessional female writing from abjection into rebellion. She persisted as a writer, but the next trio of fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the power and directness that the epistolary style brought to the voice of I Love Dick. This was not aided by was her identity as a renegade artist who had become a extensive real estate holder, so there was considerable focus on property transactions. It makes sense that she presently aims to try out fresh narrative sources, turning outward to the experiences of others, at a moment when she asserts that current political era makes confessional writing unnecessary.
Several Eras, Shared Inescapable History
The Four Spent the Day Together is organized into a trio of segments, covering several time periods – each trapped by their pasts. We encounter the tale of Emma and Jasper, based on the author's parents, moving from the urban environment to the Connecticut countryside. Additionally the story of Kraus herself, in the guise of Catt Greene, confronting the belated success of I Love Dick, the emergence of Trump, and her substance-dependent spouse a man named Paul. And there is the account of a killing of one troubled youth by another in a locality long abandoned by forward-thinking policies only a short distance from the protagonist's home in rural Minnesota.
For this reader attracted to refined literature of the kind the author herself tends to eschew, I was enchanted by the narrative style of the initial segment.
Being a reader who favors precise prose of the variety that Kraus herself often disregards, I was won over by the storytelling approach of the opening segment. It exhibits a new quality of attentiveness that allows space for minutiae, like the container that the young Catt frees from the ice at the start of the story, assisted by her adored dad. "I found an ice toy!" she says; "a great plaything", he responds, "the elliptical meanings of words rolling around in their mouths like sweet treats". The author narrates Emma's narrative with inquiry and familiarity. "Emma felt like she'd stepped into a dream – not hers, exactly."
Frustration and Disruption
I was destined to be disappointed when I hoped this different style could last out the book. Kraus notes here that she is annoyed by the satisfaction those who appreciate polished prose have taken from I Love Dick; she's devoted to fragmentation, to the untidy aesthetics she echoes from her idol writer Kathy Acker, and the emptiness and redundancy of her past books reasserts itself in the second segment. Catt is attempting to do up 36 run-down apartments in the city's most challenging districts while moving between two different states, failing to help her husband curb his addiction. She experiences powerlessness as her spouse moves between poorly supported positions as an addiction therapist in a society driven by the hostility and dread that drives an electoral success. Multiple pages are devoted about Catt being cancelled on Twitter, her professional designation altered from "author" to "landlord" on Wikipedia. The author still appears to invest excessive emotion about this. At one point she remarks that she's researching the homicide so that before departing the state, "she could potentially understand something about an the United States that her social media opponents would not understand, would not even perceive".
The Murder Narrative
So then we come to the murder itself – and the titular day experienced by the victim with the murderer and his associates. The author possesses excellent raw material, and knows hour by hour what happened when the victim Brandon came to see Brittney after encountering her on a platform where she sold sex pictures. He was hoping for sex but appears congenially to have passed the day in the company of her associates, mooching around fixing his automobile and paying for snacks and drugs, before being murdered by her romantic interest a man named Micah – a youth with psychological issues who has often been institutionalized for aggressive outbursts.
Fascination and Incompletion
The protagonist becomes fixated by the story, and I was intrigued by the way that Kraus's dual urges towards responsible documentation and audacious rule-breaking tussle in this section. However, I would have preferred her to go further into her individual preoccupations here. The compelling persona is Brittney, who gains dimension partially because of the protagonist's connection to her – yet another intelligent, harassed young woman derailing in a difficult, overlooked locality. Kraus notes that Catt speaks to Brittney in jail, but she omits the dramatization of these talks. The complete segment feels curiously unresolved, to the extent that the author's storytelling ends almost mid-par
